1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to an agricultural implementation for excavating and planting shrubs, trees or other agricultural commodities, and, more importantly, pertains to a tree planter for transplanting trees including the tree and accompanying roots with soil adhering thereto. The tree planter includes a digger including all axial and radial degrees of freedom and a trailer including a plurality of cone-shaped containers for transporting agricultural commodities such as trees.
2. Description of Prior Art
Prior art tree planters have failed to have any versatility such as freedom of movement of the boom including a digger having the four spades and reciprocal gates. The prior art truck-mounted booms have failed to have any versatility in that the boom only tilted around one vertical pivot point with extremely limited height slightly off the ground as actuated by a hydraulic cylinder. The digger including the spades could be moved up and down but failed to provide any axial in or out movement, any radial sideway movement, or any angular movement of the digger blades for positioning the digger including a root ball of agricultural roots such as tree roots with encompassing dirt attached thereto.
To properly position the digger into a pre-dug hole, whether the pre-dug hole was dug by hand, with another device, or with the tree digger itself, it was necessary for the operator of the truck with the digger to back the truck so as to properly position the digger holding the root ball directly aligned above the hole. Then and only then could the digger including the spades as a whole be dropped down into the hole and subsequently brought up individually thereby releasing the tree from the captivity of the spades of the digger.
Another prior art problem of prior art tree diggers was that it was first necessary to dig a hole for the tree or agricultural product before the truck arrived with the agricultural product within the confines of the spades of the digger. Usually this entailed the truck with the tree digger first going out to the location; digging the hole and positioning the dirt from the hole wherever it was convenient such as on another part of the property, or, in the alternative, after the hole was dug the truck would carry the dirt to the nursery or wherever the tree was picked up; then the operator of the truck would excavate the tree or agricultural product from a nursery location; finally, return to the original dug hole; and plant the tree or agricultural product into the hole.
A further particular problem with the prior art tree diggers was that it was only possible to dig and plant one tree at a time, requiring at least one trip if not more commonly two trips to the site of planting of the tree or agricultural product. As the case at hand would always have it, the nursery or point of picking up the tree would always be inconveniently located at a distance from the point of planting of the tree thereby requiring a large expenditure of not only time but also of precious fuel to transverse between the two points. This also resulted in least profits derived due to the lengthy expenditure of time traversing between two points.
Korenek, U.S. Pat. No. 3,364,601, issued Jan. 23, 1968, is illustrative of prior art, especially with respect to the point of minimal degrees of freedom of the digger on the truck.
The prior art tree diggers also failed to lift high enough to load trees or agricultural products onto a trailer in addition to lacking the degrees of freedom. The boom supporting the digger lacked versatility and degrees of freedom on the tree planter thereby preventing use of a trailer with the prior art tree planters, especially a trailer with conical-shaped containers of the present invention.
The present invention overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art by providing a tree planter-digger for trees and agricultural products having all degrees of axial and radial freedom, high lift, and includes a trailer which can be used in combination or solely including a plurality of conical-shaped containers for the transporting of a plurality of agricultural products.